History Learner
Well-known member
AFAIK, the Klan was mostly crushed by the early 1870s.
And the 14th Amendment was proposed in 1866, just one year after the end of the American Civil War. So, it wasn't anywhere near a decade after the war.
Proposed after Confederate armies had laid down their arms and the state dissolved, Lee is arguing in favor of renewed National union, and during the "easy times" of the Johnson soft Reconstruction. It's only adopted later and by then the means of legally subverting it are already clear.